I was privileged to have taught in various places around the country, basically on both coasts and in the middle. Besides living in different places and exploring them, I got to meet quite a few people, many totally unlike any people I would have met had I stayed close to where I grew up.

My high school was a Junior Seminary, something that ended as the Catholic Church was pulled kicking and screaming out of the Renaissance in the 1960s and because of the make-up of faculty and staff, and the people from all over the world who visited often, I got to meet people from different cultures and races, learned about both, and often experienced food, clothing, and viewpoints far different from those with which I had grown up.

The only Mexicans I knew growing up were the Ortegas who had moved into my childhood neighborhood. They kept very much to themselves, with the children not joining in with the rest of us for play, so, they were a mystery and by extension in 1950s Boston suburbia, so were all Mexicans. Why move from a place that is summer all year round to a place for which summer is a break from winter? Moving to California to teach for a semester introduced me to a whole new culture that often required shedding assumptions and stereotypes now that I had the facts against which to measure them.

For the majority of my teaching career, I worked with and taught people from all over, and this often required my learning something about their culture as a way to understand the students I was teaching and their families. It was important as a teacher not to inadvertently cause a problem or imply an insult by unknowingly saying or doing something that in certain cultures might be perceived as such.

A prime example of this would be my teaching at a school with a large Samoan population and learning what I could of their language and culture, their social structure as it was unique unto itself, and the hierarchy of respect so as to offend neither the parents nor, and in my case this was important, the local community Chief.

Learning about the various cultures enabled me to pass on information and dispel assumptions and stereotypes among my students when such were vocalized as different groups mingled more in middle schools that were regional as opposed elementary schools that were largely neighborhood based having many students interacting regularly with “others” for the first time.

I amazed some students because, as a White man, I actually ate the cuisine of non-White cultures. Running into a student when I went to pick up my order from a Soul Food restaurant had begun a benevolent whisper campaign as students wondered what other non-White foods I ate. It was a big deal, apparently, among middle school kids.

The more familiar I became with various groups my students belonged to and the more I was able to include people like them in lessons, often giving credit to the correct race when the assumption had been the person was white and was presented that way, the better the rapport between students and parents and me.

My roots may be Boston-Irish but who is American goes far beyond that.

If you stay within your neighborhood, as broad or as narrow as that term may be, whatever you know about within is from verifiable experience while what we think we know about without comes from people we accept information from people they know without feeling the need to verify. Your uncle may not have knowingly lied to you, but he could be guilty of having passed on false information he assumed was true when he was told it by someone he respected.

Learning about others in no way diminished me. It gave me information that increased me. Correcting an incorrect assumption of a student from one group about a student from another adds information to the first kid and validates the second. It does not take anything away from either.

Sometimes, in order to correct a false assumption, unknown and unexpected information has to be passed on or a misperception corrected so the record can be set straight.

Negative stereotypes about different groups can be dissolved if, perhaps, people saw the exceptions to them outnumber in great number those whom it fits.

However, people in power have maintained that power by promoting stereotypes, a shadowy threat based on just enough controlled information to make it believable, from which the public must be saved. This tactic might have been an effective approach in the days of limited social networking and little contact beyond the confines of our various ghettos even if we called them tract homes in suburbia, but now younger people interact across established lines through things like Tik Tok, Instagram, or whatever social platform they choose and aren’t so susceptible to the dying stereotype-based approach that the  old guard clings to like the last whaling ship leaving the port of New Bedford as the final gasp of an expiring industry only to run aground off Cuttyhunk island at the Southern end of Buzzards bay before entering open ocean. 

The previous presidential administration had instructed federal government agencies to stop racial sensitivity training condemning such training as contrary to the nation’s “fundamental beliefs,” mainly because in such training the White majority may have a few negative things said about them when it came to racially based attitudes and actions.

what is scarily named Critical Race Theory, is basically teaching American History If you are comfortable with night classes then opt for the night one or tadalafil in canada vice versa. Kamagra is one among some selected medicine that helps order viagra no prescription men dealing with ED to achieve erections and continue having a normal sex life. Dry vagina causes painful sex, which can be very cialis side effects upsetting and distressing. Stress is robertrobb.com generic levitra said to be one of the major reason why it has been in great demand over the years. warts and all to continue the good things while watching out for the bad trying to sneak in, correcting false perceptions that were created by both conscious and unconscious editing of true history, and addressing the negatives as they influence the present. It also calls for restoring the proper race and gender to historical figures to get a full understanding of who made this country great beyond those who write the history books and favor themselves over all others.

We know Louis and Clark made it, but we hear little about Sacagawea, the Native American woman who made their trip possible while she was first pregnant then a mother taking care of a baby along the way while forging friendships between the explorers and local tribes. Had she been given her proper place, the later treatment of Native Americans could have been different.

We know all about some version of the Civil War, Reconstruction, the KKK, Jim Crow, and Redlining, but few of us are aware of the ripples caused by these things that have reached the present and still have influence almost as an assumed part of the system. We may even unconsciously act according to them without knowing why they exist to begin with.

We click our tongues at the World War II internment of Japanese Americans, but, happy that’s over with, few of us know how this had totally redirected the trajectory of people’s planned lives or what affect this is still having on how “Americans” interact with the “Japanese”.

Our acceptance of “others” would be more complete if we were to have learned about the truth and not the stereotypes.

Knowing the importance of racial truth, President Biden has lifted that sensitivity training ban, but not without backlash.

We like a blond Jesus no matter how off the mark that is.

Idaho led the field in those states that are banning CRT in public schools as has Oklahoma with Tennessee and Texas poised to follow suit.

Arkansas recently passed legislation banning critical race theory in public agencies, calling it “indoctrination”, and prohibiting the state from promoting collective guilt, segregation, racial stereotyping or scapegoating. Although covering all the bases, the important part is the guilt thing because when you bring up the negatives about slavery in states where slavery was an institution, the descendants of the owners and those who fought to let them own slaves while denying paid employment to the Southern Whites might make some students feel bad about the actions of their ancestors even up to the resistance to school desegregation.

The prohibition about “Stereotyping” does not eliminate the already established stereotypes but eliminates anything but positive things being said about White people as, unlike other races, White people are not all the same, something that would be implied by mentioning a wide-spread flaw among White people’s actions or words.

Topics like the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s would be difficult to cover as students would learn about and most likely view video recordings of such people as Bull Connor and his fondness for attack dogs and firehoses, and this would make the White people in Arkansas look bad so, as we are not all Bull Connor, just don’t bring him up.

Even as Biden mandated extra “sensitivity” and diversity training for federal employees, state laws are banning such training labelling it as racist.

Think about that. Mentioning that the woman who did the math that got us to the moon was Black is somehow identity racism, but implying by the use of stereotypes that a Black person would have been incapable of doing that so the work had to have been done by a White person is just the way it is.

I was once told by the principal of the school at which I taught that while denying even a poster with positive role models for Gay students, the school having decidedly heterosexual events that excluded Gay students like Prom King or Queen unless they acted straight and the same with Home Coming, Best Couple etc, was justified because it was a heterosexual world and that was just the way it was.

This attitude if projected and acted upon in a school or government agency when it comes to race may lift one segment of students and employees, but will have negative impact on those “others”.

It is sad that states find the need to promote bigotry even if they need to be clever about it.